A Curious Little Blog

I like reading books about mistakes people commonly make:  logical fallacies, bad mental shortcuts, tricks that advertisers use, and so forth.  It is obvious that our minds are not perfectly logical, and I like to be aware of my illogical inclinations so I can prepare for them.  Economists, psychologists, and mathematicians are among the people who write books on this sort of thing. The economic angle gets a lot of attention these days because of the work of Daniel Kahneman, Nobel-prize winning economist who studied ways that people behave irrationally, allegedly contrary to economic principles.  I say "allegedly" because I believe that consumers are not expected to behave rationally according to an absolute standard of maximizing utility, because consumers define utility by their choices.  If I buy a cheap product that falls apart in a year rather than a somewhat more expensive product that will last for ten years, it may appear irrational to a neutral obser...

I went to a physical therapist on Monday, the first time I had been in this medical complex.  I pulled in a random parking place and figured I would walk to where I needed to be.  The building in front of me was clearly labelled "545."  I checked the address:  also 545, I was in luck.  As I approached the door, a saw a sign that it was only for orthopedics; all others should use the next entrance to the left.  I checked the therapist's titles; "orthopedics" was mentioned twice, so I continued in.   There was a woman behind a desk right at the entrance who informed me that I needed to go to the next entrance, second floor. No big deal.  I walked a couple of hundred feet to the next entrance, also well labelled ("515").  I saw no signs on the way in, but I did see stairs, so I proceeded to the second floor.  I found myself in a hospital ward:  patients lying on beds in rooms, nurses bustling around with medicine.  This wa...